Justice Department seizes websites that published deepfake nudes of famous women

What just happened? The US government has seized two domains accused of hosting non-consensual deepfake pornography of female celebrities, marking what prosecutors say is the first domain seizure under the Take it down Act. CFake.com and SOCFake.com now point to law enforcement notices after the Justice Department and Homeland Security Investigations obtained federal warrants to redirect the sites.

The DOJ says the domains were used to publish digitally forged nude and sexual images and videos of women without their consent. According to the Justice Department, the material involved thousands of “digital forgeries,” while the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey describes the sites as hosting hundreds of thousands of deepfake pornographic images and videos.

The targeted women included heads of state, first ladies, royalty, legislators, government officials, journalists, TV presenters, athletes, entertainers, and other public figures. Investigators said users could browse material by tags including “rape,” “forced,” “degradation,” and “slave.” Those categories are a big reason why prosecutors framed the case as abuse and exploitation rather than a copyright or impersonation dispute.

The affidavit supporting the seizure says CFake’s landing page described the content as digitally retouched and altered photos of well-known people. Its terms and conditions reportedly told any upset celebrity to contact the operators, then asked why they felt disadvantaged when “practically every female celebrity in the world” was also on the site. HSI also interviewed one victim in February who said the images were forged, non-consensual, and had caused psychological harm.

The Take it down Act, enacted in May 2025, makes it a federal crime to publish sexually explicit digital forgeries of identifiable adults without consent when the material is not a matter of public concern and is intended to cause harm or actually does so. It also gives authorities forfeiture powers over property used to facilitate violations, which in this case meant the domains themselves.

US authorities were alerted to the site by Italian cyber police, who shared evidence with France under the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. French authorities arrested a 47-year-old man in Nice on June 10, accusing him of being a CFake administrator. CyberScoop reports that French investigators identified about 300,000 images and 7,000 videos depicting 14,000 people, along with 200,000 user accounts and 4 million monthly views.

Deepfakes have been a problem for years, from Scarlett Johansson calling attempts to stop them a “lost cause” in 2019 to the Taylor Swift AI nude images that spread across X in 2024. Google later banned ads for deepfake porn services, while San Francisco sued 16 AI “undressing” websites. As generative AI becomes more advanced, easier to use, and convincing in its output, the issue is arguably getting worse, not better.